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Peter Naur's view of programming

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Re: Peter Naur's view of programming

#171

Post by p4bl0 »

ivansavz wrote: post #91
cloogshicer wrote: post #2

The referenced article by Peter Naur (Turing Award winner, invented Backus-Naur-Form) is well worth a read.

Here is a link to a PDF version of this paper: [Programming as Theory Building -- Naur 1985] https://demo.cygale.net/naur1985programming.pdf

Haha I wonder how did you came across this link?

This demo website might disappear or at least the pdf might be removed from it. The stable version of this PDF is on my web page here: https://pablo.rauzy.name/dev/naur1985programming.pdf

EDIT: to the mods: maybe the link in the parent comment could be updated and my comment deleted? (I am the maintainer of cygale.net — the demo website can be edited by virtually anyone… my personal webpage is much more trustable).

Re: Peter Naur's view of programming

#172

Post by mjburgess »

CryptoGhost wrote: post #76
IggleSniggle wrote: post #55

I am sometimes guilty of reading the comments before reading the article. I often find the reactions more concise, insightful, and valuable to me than the source material. That said: If you are reading this comment and haven’t read the article, go read the article instead. This is an inverse scenario: imho most of the comments here are interesting but have only marginal value building from the insight of the article.

The author doesn't make a good case for "The main value of a software company is the mapping of source code and problem space in the developer’s heads" being a universal truth. There are some problem domains and practical development and deployment roadblocks that simply make certain source code more valuable than others. Nowadays it seems people are more willing to throw money at open sourcing solutions so competing…

I think "software company" can probably hold the weight of the argument, if defined well.

ie., a Bank maybe finds most of its value in that its code runs, etc.

A software company, perhaps, we could define (1) simply as any company where this is true; or if that's cheating, (2) any company where its competitive advantage derives from its software developing over time.

I think the claim of this article is that (1) and (2) refer, aproximately, to the same companies: ie., that software which is changed to adapt to ever changing needs derives that capacity from the "theory of the programmers" and not the code.

Re: Peter Naur's view of programming

#173

Post by plutonorm »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #135
plutonorm wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does everyone get the impression that you can just move into management? It's certainly not the case in circles I move in. In 15 years I've not seen a single promotion into management. That's in London.

In the States, it’s not “just move into management,” but an expectation from management that their positions are “above” those who aren’t management, and once an employee maxes out salary at their skill (because we certainly won’t pay the peons more than management...) they only promotion is management. So go take some classes and work your way up that corporate ladder...

This is the opinion of management in England too. Except here there is no way to break into management without going back to school and even then it won't be easy to shake the "developer" image. I'm currently doing a startup, not because I want to do startups, but because I need to get out of development for the sake of my mental health and starting your own company is the only available avenue I have for achieving the transition.

Re: Peter Naur's view of programming

#174

Post by krab »

gmfawcett wrote: post #139
daotoad wrote: post #98

This fits nicely with some ideas I've been working on about "Tribal Knowledge". It's going to take some thought to integrate fully. I am primarily looking at the work of Ong on orality and the distinctions he draws between oral and literal cultures. It's not uncommon to hear the phrase used as a pejorative, with the implicit assumption that oral culture is inferior to literate culture and that tribalism == primitivis…

I don't know Ong's work at all. But I wonder where "lector" culture fits? If someone is reading or reciting to you, is that oral culture? or is dialogue a necessary component? Really I'm wondering where the divide is between, "you need to talk with me to learn this", and, "you can subscribe to my channel to learn this."

I think a good lecture is always followed by a discussion. So the oral culture may be more inviting to the dialogue, even if it specifically doesn't require it.

Vice versa, we're now contributing to the literal culture by discussion and people have been writing replies to texts forever. However, the ratio of information read to the amount of information discussed is different. It's harder to find people willing to discuss in writing a random piece of text you just read as opposed to discussing verbally what the lector just said.

Re: Peter Naur's view of programming

#175

Post by jimmyvalmer »

rorykoehler wrote: post #164
simiones wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you had poor teachers or a poor structure that didn't give you access to teachers in the right way. While documentation has both advantages and disadvantages compared to in-person training, video tutorials are strictly worse than an interactive lecture.

I’m an autodidact. No teacher can provide the density and velocity of information and knowledge the Internet, science papers and books can provide. I can’t watch a lecture at 2x speed if its live. I can’t cherry pick. I have to be at a certain place at a certain time when I might not be in the right headspace. Then add on top that’s it’s basically a crapshoot whether or not you get along with your teacher or not. I d…

100%. As an undergrad in the 90s I came to this conclusion as well. Then when YouTube, Khan Academy, and MOOCs hit critical mass in the 2010s, I could see the beginning of the end. COVID-19 has greatly accelerated the demise of in-person learning, and the fact that colleges continue to charge the same tuition is clear evidence that what they're selling isn't education, it's credentialling.

Re: Peter Naur's view of programming

#176

Post by tangjurine »

hallarempt wrote: post #3

_My_ source code is invaluable. It's open, public, free to reuse under the GPL. It's a complete implementation of a painting application used by millions of people. It's a huge amount of knowledge readily accessible. You won't be able to buy something like this for any sum of money, so it's free.

I'm really not trying to be snarky, but Adobe has something similar and you can buy it, right?

Re: Peter Naur's view of programming

#177

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

Could we please change the title back to its original? There is no obvious reason for changing it on the HN post.

The title of the article is How to hire senior developers: Give them more autonomy and it's not about Peter Naur's view of programming, it's about the author's view on how to hire senior developers.

The article has a few select quotes from Peter Naur's article "Programming as theory building" but the quotes are mainly used to advance the article author's opinions on hiring senior developers, rather than Peter Naur's idea of what programming is. Peter Naur does not seem to be related to this article or its author at all.

Re: Peter Naur's view of programming

#178

Post by NateEag »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #82
ErikAugust wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s incentives, partially. Programmers say their job is to put themselves out of their jobs. People don’t want to be out of their jobs, really. And we know that doesn’t happen. If anything, it locks them into their job, as “subject matter experts”. Also, most applications are built on a million layers of reusable abstractions. Even in the highest level of the code people are using frameworks and other librar…

> Programmers say their job is to put themselves out of their jobs. People don’t want to be out of their jobs, really. And we know that doesn’t happen. If anything, it locks them into their job, as “subject matter experts”. I agree it is a fools errand to ask people to work against their incentives, but by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox I don't think there is actually disincentive given enough risk tole…

> I think the bigger problems is most programs are bad and alienated. Programming with everything nicely packaged and ready to be modified is like working with a clean workbench / shop. If you've never been in a clean one, cleaning seems like a chore, but if you have, working in a dirty one seems not only inefficient, but gross and undignified.

You hit the nail on the head here.

I've worked a bunch of different jobs since college.

I have worked in exactly one clean, mature codebase.

The difference to all the others I've been in was like night and day.

I think seeing even "acceptably decent" code is incredibly rare in our industry.

To be fair, that's probably in large part because producing acceptably decent code is prohibitively expensive for any new product, and once you've gotten a new product off the ground and producing value, you've set the cultural norm that crappy code is what we make here.

Re: Peter Naur's view of programming

#179

Post by ivansavz »

p4bl0 wrote: post #171
ivansavz wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a link to a PDF version of this paper: [Programming as Theory Building -- Naur 1985] https://demo.cygale.net/naur1985programming.pdf

Haha I wonder how did you came across this link? This demo website might disappear or at least the pdf might be removed from it. The stable version of this PDF is on my web page here: https://pablo.rauzy.name/dev/naur1985programming.pdf EDIT: to the mods: maybe the link in the parent comment could be updated and my comment deleted? (I am the maintainer of cygale.net — the demo website can be edited by virtually anyon…

I found the link via Google Scholar search = https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Programming+as+Theory+B...

I was looking for a version of the paper with machine-selectable text (because the PDF linked in the OP is a scan with no OCR).

Re: Peter Naur's view of programming

#180

Post by lmm »

btilly wrote: post #157
lmm wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The last update to TeX (widely used in math and computer science for typesetting) was 12 January 2014. But if you want to actually use it you'll install a much more recent distribution - probably texlive from 2020.

Yes. You'll install a bunch of recent stuff around it. But the heart of it, TeX, is still the same old version.

I think that's playing with semantics. Most codebases have old parts, the old part of texlive just has a name. It's still being actively maintained and would be a lot less usable if it wasn't, there's just an imaginary line between the texlive part and the tex part.
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